3.5 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

Based on the hyper-converged infrastructure, XOS allows users and developers to conduct business without deploying local servers. With minimal hardware units, any cloud application in XOS can operate. This is an integrated information infrastructure framework that combines storage devices and virtual computing. In such an architectural environment, hardware units such as servers and storage from the same vendor, along with virtualization software, are integrated into a physically and virtually manageable chassis.

In HCI, both storage-level abstraction and storage networking are implemented at the software level (or through the hypervisor level) rather than relying on physical hardware. As all software-defined elements revolve around the hypervisor, all instances on the hyper-converged infrastructure can collaboratively share all managed resources.

The hyper-converged platform comprises four closely integrated software components:

• Storage Virtualization

• Compute Virtualization

• Network Connection Virtualization

• Advanced Management, including automation

Virtualization software abstracts and pools resources, and then dynamically allocates them to applications within virtual machines or containers.

The main advantages of HCI architecture over traditional hardware architecture include:

• Economic benefits of cloud resources

HCI simplifies the cost and complexity of existing infrastructure. By integrating various IT functions (compute, storage, network switching, replication, backup, etc.) on x86 hardware architecture compliant with industry virtualization standards, it enables unified global management. The solution reduces operating costs by eliminating IT silos. Through using converged technologies, optimizing storage capacity, reducing overhead for power, cooling, rack space and system management costs, it curbs the growing CAPEX and OPEX.

• Horizontal performance scaling

To minimizes upfront investments, providing high levels of flexibility and scalability.

• Virtual machine-centric design

The virtual machine-centric design retrieves data from the underlying hardware storage and virtual machine files are directly mapped to the corresponding storage blocks. All data storage, management and protection functions are essentially optimized directly for virtualization. And all management tasks, including managing data protection policies, analyzing performance and troubleshooting issues, are performed at the VM level. From a management perspective, the datastore is a simple logical structure separated from the underlying physical infrastructure. The old concepts of LUNs, volumes, shares and disk groups no longer apply.

• Accelerating agility in IT services

With a unified management platform, system administrators can globally oversee IT services, and perform virtual machine backup, restore, clone, or migration operations in just a few mouse clicks within seconds.